What Does it Take to Get Fired as a Cop in America?
Just How Incompetent Do You Have To Be?
As incidents like the murder of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and John Crawford by local police have captured Black America’s attention as well as that of the entire country over the past few years, there has been a push for indictments, convictions, jail time, and disappointment when those things don’t happen.
Cool.
I can understand that. I mean, it makes sense to me that choking someone to death gasping I can’t breathe, ambushing someone standing in the pet food isle with a B.B. gun on his shoulder, or blowing away a pre-teen playing Cowboys and Indians or, even better, the more politically correct Cops and Robbers, would require someone to at least spend a little time behind bars to reflect on their actions.
Obviously, I’m wrong.
Cool.
Life goes on, except for Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and John Crawford.
But isn’t there some space between getting the electric chair and getting off scot-free for making mistakes like this? Should you really be able to continue to carry around a gun after you’ve Dirty Harry’d a twelve year old holding a toy?
Doesn’t that make someone at a local precinct think:
“Maybe having a gun is too much responsibility for you?”
If I worked at McDonald’s and burned the fries, I probably wouldn’t be there for long.
Truthfully, I doubt I would even be given a second chance, but I guarantee you someone would drag me into an office and write me up before my shift was over.
“Couldn’t you have handled this situation better?”
And when I returned the next morning, I’m pretty sure I would suddenly find myself taking out the trash, maybe never to be given the responsibility of the fry detail again. My mistake would haunt me until my last day in the fast food industry.
“You see that guy. He burned a batch of fries at the McDonald’s off of Crenshaw and Figueroa.”
I’m not sure if Crenshaw and Figueroa actually intersect, but you get my point.
The murders of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, John Crawford, and many others and the lack of any real consequences for the police officers who caused their deaths not only speaks badly for those officers but the institution of local law enforcement in our country as a whole.
Yeah, I understand that being a cop is a tough and dangerous job, but in my humble opinion going in guns blazing to assassinate a kid who wasn’t old enough to shoot off his own gun — get it? — puts cops and the rest of us in more danger than finding a less aggressive way to handle these situations.
Couldn’t the cops have yelled for Tamir Rice to put down his toy over those loud ass pull over please speakers they always use when they stop me, or maybe called in a hostage negotiator like the guy Denzel Washington played in The Inside Man to de-escalate the non-situation?
And when you don’t think about alternate solutions like this, shouldn’t someone make the decision that cooking fries is probably a better job for you than holding up the law?
I don’t know, just a question. I guess not.
Cool.
I’m obviously the stupid one here.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of anyone who isn’t being satirical.
